Virgin love
Virgin Comics are churning out an ever-increasing number of Indian titles for the racks at your local Virgin Megastore, which as I’ve noted before is not just another name for Delhi. These thin, $3 comics are printed graphic novel style with gorgeous, original artwork but crap writing. Like Bollywood, the heroes tend to have Western features. I love the India Authenticâ„¢ tagline on the cover in faux Indic font. Deepak Chopra redefines authentic Indian culture with the stroke of a trademark symbol.
The latest titles include Indra, Panchatantra, Ganesha and Kaali. They’re really strip-mining the mythological terrain.
Even the non-Indian comics, with licensed names like John Woo, Nicolas Cage and Guy Ritchie, still have an Indian credit on the cover. The authorship reflects the location of Virgin’s art team.
Some of their asuras are great. Here’s a cat who I think hassled me for my ticket on a Bombay train once:
I’m not sure who this is below, but their Sita resembles Saira Mohan.
The most ironic use of ‘Virgin’ is in their new series featuring pr0n star Jenna Jameson:
You can see some entire titles online. Go here and click on ‘digital comics’ in the sidebar.
on Sunday, August 5th, 2007, 8:48 pm in Art, Comics, Religion › 
Email this
› 
Facebook this
› 
Reddit this
› Link
› Reader links
Crap writing is right. For a little while, I was buying every title just to support them hoping it would get better. It didn’t. It got to the point where I wasn’t even reading them anymore, so no more Virgin for me.
Hey Manish, do not go knocking up the immaculate conceptions of Virgin!
I do love the artwork,though.
Just like FearlessRahul, I tried. I really really tried to like their titles, especially the one by Chopra but aside from the artwork, they’re just not there. The prose is weird as hell and the mythological terms do not translate easily into british or american english.
So they’re just like American mainstream comics, then?
I did see a cool Indian independent graphic novel recently, but I lent it to someone and can’t remember the title.